was low and stuttering, as if he could not get his words out. The officers whom he advanced to responsible charges in the depositories of Зin were more than seventy. During his life, he had no contentions with any of them about gain, and when dying he required nothing from them for his sons.
26. Shû-kung Phî instructed (his son) 𝖅ze-liû (in the rules of ceremony); and when he died, 𝖅ze-liû's wife, who was a plain, blunt woman, wore for him the one years mourning and the headband with Its two ends tied together. (Phî's brother), Shû-kung Khien spoke to 𝖅ze-liû about it, and requested that she should wear the three months' mourning and the simple headband; saying, "Formerly, when I was mourning for my aunts and sisters, I wore this mourning, and no one forbade it." When he withdrew, however, (𝖅ze-liû) made his wife wear the three months' mourning and the simple headband[1].
27. There was a man of Khǎng, who did not go into mourning on the death of his elder brother. Hearing, however, that 𝖅ze-kâo was about to become governor of the city, he forthwith did so.
The people of Khǎng said, "The silkworm spins
- ↑ Shû-kung Phî was the first of a branch of the Shû-sun clan, descended from the ruling house of Lû. The object of the paragraph seems to be to show, that 𝖅ze-liû's wife, though a plain simple woman, was taught what to do, by her native feeling and sense, in a matter of ceremony, more correctly than the two gentlemen, mere men of the world, her husband and his uncle. The paragraph, however, is not skilfully constructed, nor quite clear. Kǎng Hsüan thought that 𝖅ze-liû was Phî's son, which, the Khien-lung editors say, some think a mistake. They do not give definitely their own opinion.
